the court of appeal reopens the investigation into the coach accident of Puisseguin

The Bordeaux Court of Appeal decided on Thursday March 2 to reopen the investigation into the coach accident in Puisseguin. Forty-three people were killed in the collision of a semi-trailer and a bus transporting pensioners, at the exit of this village of Gironde, in October 2015. Trapped in the vehicle invaded by flames and toxic fumes, 41 passengers were burned to death or asphyxiated. Eight others had survived. The truck driver and his 3-year-old son also died in the accident.

The Bordeaux Court of Appeal ordered additional information tending “to indictments of the natural or legal persons responsible for the installation of the additional fuel tank at the back of the cabin” of the semi-trailer that hit the coach, she said in a statement. The judgment delivered on Thursday also leads “to further investigations with regard to the design of the coach”Mercedes brand.

A dismissal order overturned

“We won our case on all the points that we had developed a few months ago before the investigating chamber. It’s a brand new instruction that opens today”, reacted Marie Mescam, lawyer for one of the civil parties, Thursday. She welcomed the fact that the investigations focus in particular on “the design of the bus, with the involvement of Mercedes”to determine “if the security obligations have been complied with”.

No indictment had taken place in this case, in six years of proceedings. In October 2021, a judge dismissed the case. He had estimated that the excessive speed of the semi-trailer driver was the main cause of the accident and the resulting deaths. The investigation chamber of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal “reversed the dismissal order”THURSDAY.